This specification relates to serving a targeted ad request using Structured Content View (SCV) servers.
A publisher of a webpage can sell advertising space on the publisher's webpage. An advertiser may wish to advertise on a particular publisher webpage if, for example, the content of the webpage relates to products or services that the advertiser wishes to sell. A content ad provider (e.g., Google™) can be an intermediary between the publisher and the advertising by selecting relevant ads to be displayed on the publisher's webpage. The ads can be targeted to the specific content displayed on the publisher's webpage.
Generally, a typical webpage contains content that can include images, multimedia, and textual content. The textual content of a webpage can be used, for example, to extract keywords for serving a request for content ads. An advertiser can request ad placement on publisher webpages that contain certain keywords. If a webpage contains references to a keyword, a content ad provider can target ads for products or services related to that keyword.
Many webpages have substantial textual content that can be used for extracting information for targeting ads. However, some webpages provide only limited textual content making ad targeting more difficult. For example, the textual content of webpages on online social networks (e.g., MySpace®) can be fragmented and brief. Additionally, information which would be relevant for ad targeting may not be linked to a webpage, preventing this information from being gathered to supplement the limited textual content of the webpage. In these circumstances, the targeted ads returned may not be very relevant to the content on the webpage.